9 events on Spark Festival program director Maxine Sherrin’s must see list

The Spark Festival, Australia’s largest event for startups, innovators and entrepreneurs, kicks off next week with more than 130 events, many of them free, happening over 17 days.

Spark Festival 2019 runs October 10 – 27 and with so much to choose from, Startup Daily asked Spark Festival program director Maxine Sherrin to single out some of the must see moments.

2050 EMERGENT

Oct 19

30 years ago the World Wide Web was pretty much just an idea, sketched out in a few pages by Tim Berners-Lee in a paper his boss described as “vague, but exciting”. 2050 EMERGENT is showcasing the “vague but exciting” ideas of 2019, the ones that might shape Sydney in 30 years time, in 2050.

 

The Innovation Game

Oct 15

We all know that startups innovate better, but do they really? The Innovation Game will pitch successful startup founders and masterful corporate innovators in the ultimate test to find out who gets the Innovation Trophy.

 

Cryptopia: Bitcoin, Blockchains and the Future of the Internet

Oct 21

Spark Festival program director Maxine SherrinCan blockchain technology, designed to operate independent of trust and within a decentralized network, really provide a robust alternative to our current systems?

Can it reboot the utopian dreams of the early days of the web all over again?

Filmmaker Torsten Hoffmann asks the hackers, hipsters and hustlers.

 

Innovation in Global Health

Oct 24

Love this event because it is a true mash-up of Spark festival themes: Hear how social enterprise is colliding with innovation and traditional medical research to tackle problems such as unaffordable kidney dialysis, cardiovascular disease in remote communities, and complex treatment for hypertension.

 

Uncovering Indigenous Innovation

Oct 17

Australia has a unique history of 60,000 years of innovation led by the world’s oldest civilisation.

This event is a great chance to explore some of these innovations through an entrepreneurial lens and to reflect on the value of Indigenous thinking for today’s society.

 

Adding value to your start up through Intellectual Property

Oct 24

A lot of people sail into their first ventures with very little knowledge of IP and how much value it can add to their enterprise, often having it dawn on them years down the track when a lot of potential value has not been harnessed.

 

The Next Seat – bringing gender diversity to the startup boardroom

Oct 10

There’s no shortage of stories of startups that have got themselves into some pretty scalding water through having a poor culture in the organisation.

But what a lot of people don’t realise is that trying to retro-fit diversity and inclusion once you are months and years into your startup is almost impossible.

You’ve got to bake it in from the get-go.

A joint venture between Innovation Bay and Reinventure, The Next Seat aims to continue the conversation around how startups can build effective boards that prioritise diversity from the outset.

 

Don’t build a business, build a brand

Oct 24

Start-ups often build businesses quickly through growth hacking, using only superficial branding. Then once they’ve got a bit of success, and are probably in a more crowded marketplace, they try and retrofit a well-conceived brand. Tricky.

This is another workshop that might save you a lot of trouble down the track.

 

New Business Shower

Oct 11

A bit like having a child, until you’ve actually started a business of your own, most people have no idea how huge and life changing an undertaking it is.

And yet for all the celebration of entrepreneurship, there’s actually very little acknowledgement of the massive milestone that is the launch of your business.

The Business Shower – kind of like a baby shower but for businesses – is all about changing that and celebrating the small wins.